All-in On Bitcoin: Square's Crypto Division Snags Google Alumnus

Square Crypto Takes the Plunge (… Finally)

A little over an hour ago, Square Crypto, the Silicon Valley firm’s Bitcoin (BTC) centric initiative/division started making some, uh, odd tweets. Introducing itself as Gary Fuches, the handle, run by Square, the financial technology play by Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey, claimed that he “loved blockchain in a very big way”.

And then in an odd turn of events, “management” came to redact Gary’s comments, revealing instead that Steve Lee will be joining Square Crypto. This, of course, was an evident jab at Square’s dislike towards “blockchain”, but love towards all things Bitcoin. So, you must be wondering, who is Steve Lee?

Well, according to his star-studded LinkedIn profile, he is an alumnus of both Yahoo and Google. At Google, Lee excelled as a director, managing the teams behind Google Maps, Google Glass, and certain of the firm’s mobile application branches. Lee is also an angel investor, having made early investments in Lyft, Pinterest, Groupon, and Anchor Labs. But most importantly, he is currently a volunteer for the Bitcoin Decentralized Project and acts as a catalyst for the adoption of the cryptocurrency in the Bay Area. Square describes him as:

An angel investor, startup advisor, and former Director at Google. He is also a volunteer PM helping to drive bitcoin adoption through open-source development, UX, and storytelling.

Working on Boosting Bitcoin Adoption

This marks Square Crypto’s first hire ever. For those who missed the memo, in March, Twitter chief Dorsey wowed the Bitcoin community with a straight out of left field announcement. On March 20th, the Missouri native, who joins Elon Musk as an outspoken crypto proponent, revealed that the multi-billion dollar company in Square intends to hire up to five talents for “open source contributions to the Bitcoin and crypto ecosystem.” At the time, Dorsey stated that he intended to open three or four of those spots to engineers, especially those who have experience working with open blockchain ecosystems, while the remaining seats would be left for a designer.

Dorsey then stated that he intends for those he hires to report directly to him, in spite of his responsibilities managing Square’s 2,000 staffers and Twitter’s 4,000-strong workers. And if this wasn’t a good enough of an offer already, Square claimed it would be open to forking out Bitcoin to those they hire, likely marking the first time that a large organization will pay their employees in a non-fiat currency.

Square, of course, is one of the only mainstream firms dealing with Bitcoin, and the only one directly selling it. The firm sold over $50 million worth of the cryptocurrency last fiscal quarter, and is purportedly a big catalyst for the growth of BTC in the United States.